Since the introduction of personal computers in the early 1980s, most documents and manuscripts have been prepared from within a word processing program on such a computer. Indeed, most documents on personal computers are created on a limited number of word processing packages that have come to dominate the market. Most of the data acquisition that attendees of Microscopy and Microanalysis currently perform is digital, i.e. directly into a personal computer or desktop workstation. It is frequently the case that images, spectra and diffraction patterns are only committed to paper when they are dispatched for publication. With the advent of the World Wide Web in 1994, and its subsequent explosive growth, entirely electronic publishing has become possible. It is possible to envisage the day when most publications will be available solely electronically and material will be only printed out occasionally by the reader.

While there are a growing number of journals that are only available electronically, entirely paperless publication is not yet the norm and there are no definite plans, as yet, to publish the proceedings of the Microscopy and Microanalysis meetings solely in electronic format. However, there are a number of advantages to applying some of these emerging technologies in the production of the future proceedings. Electronic submission of abstracts is one advance that is being considered by the organizers of the meetings scheduled for the early 2000s. The National Science Foundation now receives almost all proposals electronically. There are several reasons for moving to electronic submission. The first is that proofing and correcting the abstracts would then be straightforward.